Fed Govt can’t seem to agree on Benue massacre

WHILE Garba Shehu, a presidential spokesman, was busy taking umbrage at a newspaper columnist who he growled described the president as a murderer over the Benue crisis, and warning that such descriptions amounted to hate speech, government officials and security chiefs were labouring to find common ground on their different perceptions of the Benue massacre. Mallam Shehu may not like what he is hearing about the president, but the perception in most circles is that the number one citizen has behaved less than exemplary in his approach to the herdsmen/farmers clashes in many parts of the country. Indeed, in some instances, the president is perceived to have taken sides.

The column (not this newspaper) Mallam Shehu complained about was anchored on the widely condemned statement made by the Defence minister, Mansur Dan-Ali, to the effect that the herdsmen attacks were inevitable once grazing routes were blocked. The minister’s view seemed an insensitive justification of the massacres. But quite apart from wrongly characterising those uncomplimentary views of the president’s approach as hate speech on the same day a Fulani lecturer from Maitama Sule University in Kano all but suggested the supremacy of the Fulani in Nigeria, it has also become clear that government officials, including, sadly, security chiefs, are unable to agree on the cause and course of the farmers/herdsmen clashes.

The puzzle is how without a consensus on the causes and course of the bitter and bloody struggle going on in many parts of the country the government can still manage to devise a solution. There have been scores and scores of debates and analyses to explain the clashes. They range from exculpating the local Fulani and putting the blame on foreign Fulani invaders, to ascribing the bloodletting to the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) without a shred of evidence, and to suggesting laughably that the problem is a communal misunderstanding criminals are taking advantage of. Other explanations include blaming feuding farmers and herdsmen militias, and even suggesting that the anti-open grazing laws of Benue and Taraba States were responsible for the clashes. Those who blamed grazing laws did not explain why the clashes and body count predated the laws.

While it is true that one reason does not explain the clashes, it is downright dishonest for the government to pursue red herrings when the real reasons stare them in the face. Worse, as many have suggested, it is clear that the narrow composition of the country’s security apparatus has eroded the impartiality of the government and robbed it of the healthy debates and balanced perspectives required to help produce quality decisions. In their debates, assuming they do not just deferentially reinforce one another’s biases, they are unable to accommodate different and countervailing views. This was why the Defence minister caused an outcry when he came out angrily to justify the bloody clashes. This was also why the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, also came out without any logic to blame the anti-open grazing laws of Benue and Taraba States despite the fact that farmers/herdsmen clashes predated the law and continue to take place in states where such laws do not exist.

It is hard not to conclude, as the Senate did, that the government has not done enough to curb the bloodletting. It is also not baffling that many commentators are shocked by the government’s apparent bias. Perhaps it is time the presidency held a mirror to its face on the herdsmen crisis. It will see nothing but indecision, paralysis and confusion. That Mallam Shehu considers these worried but trenchantly uncomplimentary view of the president’s pussyfooting as hate speech and disrespectful characterisation is all the more shocking and depressing.